TT: Following the Trend
JANE: Last week we started chatting about a trend you have found bothersome – that of reviewers reviewing books based on current social standards rather than those of the time in which they were written.
A Time and a Place
Being us, we went off on a Tangent about language in general. Today, I’d like you to provide an added example since – as I noted last week – I doubted that one review alone would be enough to make you irate.
ALAN: Quite right. One example does not define a trend. But I am seeing this kind of thing more and more often. James Nicoll, for example, is a reviewer/critic, whose reviews I regularly read. He takes pride in reviewing books by female writers and “people of colour” (revolting euphemism) specifically because the writers are female and/or people of colour. Every so often he publishes statistics to show how even-handed he is in his reading. In November 2015 he reviewed 28 books, 15 by male writers and 13 by female writers. Seven of the writers (25%) were people of colour. He seems to think these figures are significant in some way that completely escapes me.
He’s actually a very good reviewer. I admire his insights into the books he reviews. But choosing the books you read on the basis of the race or gender of the writer rather than on whether or not you think the story might be worth reading strikes me as silly.
Also, he re-reads and reviews a lot of older works and he always makes a point of highlighting race and gender issues that, these days, make him feel uncomfortable. As a result, he often concludes that he is no longer able to enjoy books which he once admired.
JANE: That’s sad, but I can see it happening. Still, I don’t see Mr. Nicoll and the anonymous Reddit reviewer you mentioned last week to be enough for a trend… Can you offer other examples?
ALAN: How about this? I recently heard a rather well-known SF writer giving a talk at a convention. She remarked quite forcefully that she had never read a book written by a male author or a book which had a male protagonist, and she never would. My jaw still hasn’t stopped dropping…
JANE: Okay. That’s amazingly crazy. I can’t imagine not reading anyone just because of their gender. That leaves out Shakespeare – in fact almost all classic drama or works published before a certain time.
Then again, sadly, there are men who avoid books written by women because they assume these books will be too soft, too feminine, and too full of romance.
Maybe your unnamed “well-known SF writer” was poking fun at this still sadly common male reaction… I can’t imagine she had really managed to achieve this unlikely goal.
ALAN: No, she wasn’t joking. She re-iterated the point several times over the course of the convention.
JANE: Incredible! But go on… You’re a reviewer. How do you handle such issues?
ALAN: My own opinion is that because societal attitudes are constantly changing, it is very hard to apply those attitudes retrospectively. I find it amusing that in the early nineteenth century, Thomas Bowdler published an expurgated edition of Shakespeare, edited so as not to offend contemporary sensibilities (and by doing so he gave us a new verb, “to bowdlerise”).
If we were to repeat that exercise today, probably we’d keep much of what Thomas Bowdler cut out, and we’d cut out much of what he kept. For example, he modified Hamlet so that Ophelia’s death became an accidental drowning and all references to suicide were omitted. We wouldn’t do that now, but we probably would have problems with the anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice, the underage sex of Romeo and Juliet, and the racism of Othello (though the inter-racial romance of Othello might also be seen as demonstrating a positive, progressive attitude. Win some, lose some…)
In other words, cultural attitudes are moving targets. Best, in my opinion, to accept works from a certain time period just as they are, for just what they are. That way I can continue to enjoy the delightful wit and wisdom of Jane Austen without having to worry too much about the appalling gender stereotyping displayed by her novels…
JANE: Your example of Austen is interesting, actually. I think one reason for her renewed popularity is that characters like Elizabeth Bennett resonate with modern women. Despite the limits imposed on her, she strives to set rights wrong. In fact the very title Pride and Prejudice can be read as a commentary on how societal attitudes are limiting.
What’s tougher for me is reading books where derogatory terminology, especially related to race, is used as it was at the time, with no self-consciousness because that’s how people talked. When I couple months ago I read Eddie Rickenbacher’s autobiographical Fighting the Flying Circus, I kept flinching as he referred to the Germans as Bosch, Huns, Krauts – in fact, as anything except Germans.
Yet, if I were to decide to write a novel set in that time period, with that sort of character, I would feel it necessary to have my characters to do the same.
ALAN: Of course you would – verisimilitude is important. Sometimes there are (ill-advised) attempts to retrofit modern opinions into older works when they are republished. I read a story once in which the protagonist had a job removing smoking scenes from old Hollywood movies. And in the real world there’s the notorious case of a certain Agatha Christie novel…
JANE: Yep… Ten Little Niggers, later retitled Ten Little Indians, also retitled And Then There Were None. The last time I re-read the book, not only had it been issued under the title And Then There Were None, but the verse within (which details the gruesome fates of ten individuals) had been recast so that we now no longer had her original niggers, or the later Indians, but “solider boys.”
One casualty of this is that when one character goes into hysterics over someone’s mention of “our black brothers,” it no longer makes any sense for her to react so strongly.
And, by the by, none of the people who die in the course of the novel are either niggers or Indians. They’re all what we here in New Mexico would call “Anglos.”
ALAN: Exactly. Agatha Christie was just making a reference to a popular song of the time that reflected the broad outline of her plot. Actually, I thought it was quite a clever reference…
That same controversial word caused Sir Peter Jackson some amusing moments a while back when he announced that he was going to remake that classic movie The Dam Busters. In the original movie, and in real life, Wing Commander Guy Gibson who led the bombing raids on the dams had a black Labrador dog called Nigger. Immediately there was much speculation on the internet about what Sir Peter would call the dog in his movie. Obviously he couldn’t use the dog’s real name…
JANE: So, what did he decide to call the dog?
ALAN: Nobody knows. The film is still in the planning stage.
JANE: You’ll need to let us all know what happens. Unless you’re exhausted by this topic, next time I’d enjoy talking about some authors who I feel have handled the difficult question of how to handle issues of race or gender orientation at different time periods well, without preaching and yet without ignoring the existence of the issue.
ALAN: That sounds good. It will be nice to find some positive examples.
